Cousin Brucie Bartlett Explains It All to You

In the context of Dan's post below, I just want to repeat what Bruce Bartlett said so accurately yesterday: [H]ere's what I would be doing if I were organizing opposition to the Republican budgetary disinformation campaign. First of all, I would be holding hearings five days a week in the Senate Appropriations Committee and every other Senate committee on the impact of proposed Republican budget cuts. Whose benefits are going to be cut? What programs will be shut down? What are the real world consequences of the Republicans' plans?I have no idea and I have made an effort to try and find out. But there are undoubtedly people who know at the Office of Management and Budget and the various departments of government that are filled with assistant secretaries eager to testify before a congressional committee and respond in detail to the implicit Republican argument that spending can be massively cut without hurting anyone. Another thing I would be doing is commissioning reports by the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, and the Congressional Budget Office to provide data and analysis on the impact of Republican plans. And believe me, any request from the chairman of the appropriations committee gets the very careful attention of those who run these organizations for obvious reasons. The next obvious step is to get all of the various organizations that represent farmers, defense contractors, health providers and so on to do their own analyses based on their intimate knowledge of how spending cuts will affect them. These people will also be more than happy to testify before a congressional committee on short notice. Within a couple of weeks I think it would be very easy to put flesh on the bones of the Republican plans and mobilize the millions of people who will be affected but probably have no idea at this time that this is the case because no one has told them. I think the political dynamics could change quickly. But someone needs to get the ball rolling, get the analyses started, organize the hearings and so on. Why this isn't already being done, is a complete mystery to me. [emphasis mine] That no one has been willing or able to answer Mr. Bartlett's question tells me all I need to know about who will be hurt by the cuts: the vast majority of the American people. We're not just talking the people who scheduled a trip to DC after their kid was fascinated by Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. We're talking the kids, their parents, and their neighbors. The silence from the DSCC members is deafening. And, in more than one sense of the word, Depressing.